1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to an electronic dictionary having digitally stored therein the phonetic sounds of each word in a vocabulary limited to words known to pre-school children, as well as the letters of the alphabet which spell each of these words, and more particularly to a phonics training computer system that includes an electronic dictionary of this type and is adapted to teach pre-school children how to spell and read the words therein.
2. Status of Prior Art
A child cannot read a printed text until he learns how the words which make up the text are spelled. It is only when a reader recognizes a word from the way it is spelled that he can read it. Hence spelling is a prerequisite to reading.
A child usually first learns to spell and read after he enters an elementary school. However, it is advantageous to have a pre-school child, three to five years of age, learn at home to spell and read the words included in his then limited vocabulary. In his pre-school years, a typical child mainly knows words which name objects, such as people, animals and things that he has actually seen. Thus the pre-school child has in his vocabulary the words: boy, girl, man, cat, dog, bottle, house, orange and apple, but not transistor, scalpel or generator.
Should a child in his pre-school years be able to spell and read the simple words in his limited vocabulary before entering an elementary school, this ability significantly reduces the shock experienced by the typical child when given in school his first book to read. A child who before entering an elementary school become familiar with the alphabet and how the letters of the alphabet form words, is in a far better condition to cope with the early stresses of an elementary school away from home than a child whose very first exposure to the alphabet is after entering this school.
Phonics is a method of teaching children elementary reading and spelling based on the sounds (phonetics) of ordinary words. The drawback of conventional phonics, as applied to the English language is that the sounds of syllables which make up words have no consistent spelling. Thus a word with a K sound may be spelled with a C, while a words with an F sound, with a PH.
As noted in the Wood patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,98 (1996) children learn letters and the names of various objects by audible repetition accompanied by visualization of the object. Wood discloses a learning device in the form of an open book for pre-school children in which the book has three-dimensional letters of the alphabet received by a card that spells a word.
In the Wood learning device, the card is placed in the book. Then a speech processor circuit recites a word written in the book and sounds the phonics associated with each phoneme in the word when the child places the correct alphabet letters in the card and repeats the entire word.
Of prior art interest is the electronic dictionary disclosed in the 1989 Hashimoto patent U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,596. In a phonics training computer system in accordance with the invention, the system includes an electronic dictionary in which digitally stored therein are the phonetic sounds of each word in a limited vocabulary of words as well as the letters which spell each listed word.
Of particular prior art interest is the software being currently marketed by Dragon Systems, Inc. identified as "Dragon, Naturally Speaking". This software, when used with a standard computer or PC having an output video terminal, makes it possible for its user to speak into a voice recognition unit associated with a computer which is adapted to recognize the voice of the speaker and to process the words spoken by the user so that these words appear on the screen of the terminal properly spelled.
The Dragon system includes in its memory a vocabulary of 30,000 active words with spelling, pronunciation, context recognition and word usage information. "Dragon, Naturally Speaking" is a basic word processor that learns and recognizes the voice of the speaker and can learn dialects, accents and individual pronunciations quickly and automatically. Thus an adult user can dictate into a Dragon word processor and at the same time see the words he is speaking on the screen, properly spelled.
In order to teach a pre-school child to spell and read, one must take into account that the vocabulary of this child is of limited scope, being made up largely of simple words identifying objects familiar to the child, such as boy, man, rock, spoon, book, chair and house. No need exists therefore, as in the Dragon word processor, for a computer memory having a vocabulary comparable in size to that of a standard dictionary. While a Dragon word processor is useable by a pre-school child, it fails to factor in the natural learning process by which a pre-school child learns to spell and read.
Essential to this process is both aural and visual association. When a child speaks a word, it is necessary for teaching purposes that he then see what this word alone looks like in alphabetic terms. Thus when a child says the word CAT, he should then see on a screen only the letters CAT, and he should concurrently see on the screen what a cat looks like.
Thus when a child speaks the word CAT, these sounds should summon up the letters which spell this word and a picture of a cat. In the way, the sounds of the word are associated in the child's mind with the spelling of the word and an image of the object identified by the word. The interrelated aural and visual associations serve to effectively engrave in the mind of the child both the spelling of the word and its meaning, thereby making it possible for the child not only to read the word when the spelled word appears in a book but to fully understand its meaning.